Apple says that 200,000 software developers have signed up for the iPhone SDK. That is really big. Huge even.
Oppenheimer called the response to the SDK “tremendous” and said that interest in developing enterprise applications for the iPhone is also going well. More than 400 higher educations are now creating applications for the iPhone, and more than one-third of Fortune 500 companies are actively creating software for the iPhone as well.
But clearly this is more of an iPhone Central story. Why am I bringing this news here? That’s 200,000 developers that could be interested in developing for the Mac platform as well. Surely a large chunk were already fans of the Mac, but there are a large contingent that has never done so, but may see the power of tapping into a new market that is growing. Let’s hope the iPhone SDK is Apple’s gateway drug to Mac software development.
The 200,000 is surely filled with a lot of developers who just wanted to check out the SDK, curious people who downloaded the SDK but don't know what to do with it, and people who signed up but never were even able to get the SDK because the servers were too busy and haven't tried again.
However, yeah, I would hope that developers who create an iPhone interface for their tools might check out the Mac programming tools which are available. Many of the methodologies which the iPhone pushes are similar to the Mac development methodologies, so using the iPhone SDK might open some eyes about the possibilities of this platform as well.
It is certainly a gateway drug. Cocoa is like crack for programmers. When folks see how elegant and easy it is to make beautiful software, they'll be loving the Mac SDK, which is like the iPhone SDK times a thousand.